From a simple contact form to a detailed profile series or checkout process. Forms are one of the most important elements of your website.
A bad form can lead to poor conversion rates, frustrated users and the loss of customers. A good form however can make what we call “Raving Fans” out of your customers.
Here are some quick tips we follow whenever we make a new form. If you have any tips that you follow, comment below!
Things to do:
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Make sure you setup the tab order on your form. I'm a tabber when I’m filling out forms and there is nothing worse than when your selected field jumps down the page or off to a hyperlink when tabbing.
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Make your submit button meaningful. “GO” is not a meaningful submit button, try “proceed to confirmation” or “update profile”
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Make your form logical. Set it up the way you would read it and ease them into it. If the form contains questions, start with their details first then the questions.
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Break your form into sub-sections. If as per point 3 your fields don't follow on from each other, break it up, put in a sub header and let the customer know that they are in a different section of the form.
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Create meaningful and easy to follow validation. If it’s a large form, don't have all the validation at the top… nothing worse than having to scroll to fix an error. And don't add validation to fields that aren't required. If customers don't want to fill it in and are getting prompted for it, then more than likely they will get frustrated and leave.
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And last but surely not least, don't add in fields that are not required. The more fields there are the more likely the chance is that the customer will get confused or frustrated and leave.
And make sure you Test, Test and TEST your form.
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